Search

This paper shares a flexible activity for engaging people in mathematical inquiry that does not depend on fixed prior knowledge built on a famous property of Möbius strips. The discussion includes the implementation of the activity and its extensions, facilitator moves and common participant thinking, suggestions for adaptation and integration into courses, reflection on ways to leverage the activity for discussion with students at the start of a course about the nature of mathematical inquiry and norms for learning through inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experienced provers employ a host of skills when assessing the validity of a justification, often without names for those skills. This paper offers an introduction to a lens called Toulmin analysis that can help make sense of this process. Then this paper describes both an in-class module to help students learn to apply Toulmin analysis and multiple ways this module can be integrated into courses for mathematics majors and non-majors. Toulmin analysis has helped us bring human dimensions of proving to the surface in our classrooms, and it helps us build stronger and more inclusive entryways for students into mathematical communities. Learning about Toulmin analysis helps our students connect mathematical reasoning to other thinking, supporting transfer in both directions, and it has changed our thinking about the teaching and learning of mathematics even in contexts where we do not devote class time to this model overtly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several major themes related to rethinking assessment emerged from a search of the papers published in PRIMUS. Authors explored ways to change the stakes of assessments, often with outcomes-based grading and testing structures. They explored changing the structure of assessments by considering media beyond written exams and by configuring them as group activities. They explored ways to change the focus of their assessments by asking students to synthesize and engage messy applications/projects and by making metacognition part or all of the assessment activities. And they explored issues around assessment as part of a larger system by considering approaches to grading in general, alignment with other course activities, workload, and perceptions and expectations about assessment in mathematics. In this PRIMUS Curated Collection, I discuss these themes and offer some editorial perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We provide an introduction to the special issue on Teaching Inquiry, through its motivation and themes, focusing here on Part II: Implementing Inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We have used wiki technology to support large-scale, collaborative writing projects in which the students build reference texts (called WikiTextbooks). The goal of this paper is to prepare readers to adapt this idea for their own courses. We give examples of the implementation of WikiTextbooks in a variety of courses, including lecture and discovery-based courses. We discuss the kinds of challenges that WikiTextbooks address and focus on critical design decisions. Finally, we conclude with a suggested template wiki project that is approachable for new users and appropriate for many course structures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]